REVIEWS :

The Wire : The Slovenian village of Šmartno hosts an annual festival of contemporary music which has attracted notable guests including Trevor Watts, Phil Minton and Joëlle Léandre. This release presents two performances from the 2015 event, featuring three visitors from neighbouring Italy. Andrea Gulli’s Češnje (Cherry) is a live electronics presentation that starts with a cantering rhythm, develops through a mesh of blips and twittering, soaks up some fixated keyboard phrases and high-pitched whistling, and ultimately settles into an orbit of layered loops. The interest of this piece diminishes as the looping technique takes on a rather oppressive air of inevitability. Niso Letele Ptice (Flightless Birds) finds Giovanni Maier’s double bass and Giorgio Pacorig’s Korg synthesizer caught up in a struggle to find common ground. Between stretches of restless activity they achieve interludes of purposeful dialogue and accord.